Sydney Padua

I’ve been in Denmark at the sooper-cool Animation Workshop these last few weeks teaching a crash course in transitioning to CG from hand-drawn animation. Everyone who has worked with me in CG can now be reduced to hysterical laughter at the thought of me trying to teach someone how to do constraints, cope with breaking rigs, etc. etc…

On the last day of the course just for a change I talked a bit about animation as a stylized theater– before I studied animation I did a degree in Theater History. I was particularly interested in masked theaters, such as Noh or Commedia del’Arte, and as I got more into animation I started to see it as obviously part of this tradition– an animated face, after all, very much resembles a mobile mask:

It isn’t so easy to find good reference about this sort of thing and it helps to know your way around some theater history lingo so I promised the class I’d collect some stuff and put it up on this website. You could write several large books on this subject so this is going to be more like a Rough Guide to Abstract Theater with a lot of YouTube links:

This is a scene from “Weyreap’s Battle”, with the Monkey-king so well-known all over Asia meeting a mermaid. Khmer classical dance, rescued from extinction in Cambodia with extraordinary heroism by these great artists, is one of the best and most compete examples of masked theater.

All theater right up until about 70 or 80 years ago was masked in one way or another– either with actual masks, or heavily painted faces, and the kind of performance and movement the actors used was also highly exaggerated and stylized. The kind of acting we’re used to in television or the movies, that doesn’t LOOK like acting, is very new. This is the ‘Method’ school, and it bears the same relationship to the theatrical tradition as photography does to painting. This kind of realism in acting of course is something every animator needs to understand. For me however animation fits more naturally into the older stylized school– Bugs Bunny would look quite weird acting in an ‘invisible’ style like Marlon Brando; personally I think with stylized characters and stylized backgrounds the performance needs also to be stylized. The Golden Age guys all took their acting from Vaudeville, and Vaudeville took all it’s acting from Commedia del’Arte, which comes from Roman comedy, which comes from Greek comedy.

It’s hard to think of where to start on this subject, so here’s a broad outline of the universal characteristics of this kind of theater. When you see a very abstract performance such as Noh it may seem very alien, but actually if you look again you will see some things that are surprisingly familiar. I think, for example, that every single element in the following list appears in “The Lion King”:

Attributes of masked/stylized/abstract theater

Story:

stock stories– fairy tales or myths. Usually the story is already very well known to the audience

stock characters– ‘types’– the Miser, the Lovers, the King, the Villain. Identifiable as soon as they appear by costume, characteristic gesture, etc.

stock settings– The Forest, The City

often set in a past ‘Golden Age’

sentimental, universal emotions– love triumphant, wicked defeated

mix of ‘high’ and ‘low’ characters, such as ‘straight’ lovers and grotesque clowns.

concern with kingship/leadership– true leader missing, imprisoned, lost, etc, and must be recovered

mix of plot scenes with interludes pure dance, song, comedy, or fighting, that does not drive the story

mystery, allusive and illogical action, dreamlike moods

plots of large single actions ending in stasis– complication and release

catharsis– either happy or tragic endings, disaster averted or disaster happens

people being drawn into or driven out of society– ends on marriages for the good and punishments for the guilty

heroes that support the core social values, and rejection of antisocial qualities

teaching role, religious role– essentially a conservative medium

but also satyric role– licence to mock establishment

audience participation in cheering and booing

assumed shared values of audience

Elements:

gods, fairies, talking animals, ghosts

monsters, demons

magical events, creatures, and devices

physical transformations, people into animals, ghosts, or into other people of different social status or different genders. Disguises.

glamour and fantasy– power, riches, beauty

‘the people’ as a character– a ‘chorus’ representing the society

events culminate in ‘tableaux’– a moment where all the players stop and create a ‘picture’ of the dramatic event

spectacle, music, dance

romance- true love and weddings

music and dance. Poetry for dialogue.

masks, opulent costumes, heavy face paint

clowning

no 4th wall– characters address audience

gags and ‘lazzi’– comic business often with props, puns, misunderstandings, fast talk

Performance characteristics for the actor/animator to be aware of:

No distinction between acting and dance– one flows into the other.

‘Suspension’– an extremely ‘ready’ way of holding the body

long, exaggerated lines of action

Participation of whole body in gesture OR

Extreme isolation of one part of body motion

exaggerated counterpoising of pelvis, ribcage, and head

core of performance is HOLDS of characteristic attitudes

basic movement of holds moved between with fast action

actions faster or slower than normal

eye pops, and eye leads, heavily outlined eyes

wave action through hands

wave action through body

exaggerated use of the breath– energy in waves through the body

stylized hand and eye movements often with gestural language

seemingly effortless, impossible, and acrobatic action

Large ‘theatrical’ anticipations and takes

Mimed or ‘objective’ action– that is, action deconstructed into parts

repeated actions to point of being mechanical;shakes and takes as though body
siezed by outside force

Unashamed use of cliche

Romantic leads of unusual beauty and grace

Clowns with grotesque features

Crouching postures on servant/animal/clown characters– Groucho Marx, Bugs Bunny

Slapstick comedy– elaborate falls, hits, and takes

acrobatic stage fighting

tableaux of characters and sets

dancelike movement or outright dance

songlike speaking or outright singing

Someday I’ll put up some posts going into some of these points a bit futher (or at least to clarify what the heck they mean!), but in the meantime, you can always browse around the playlist I’ve put together.

Names to Know (a very random list):

Jaques Lecoq, the very influential in the physical theater movement, wrote many books that are worth reading. “The Moving Body” is a good introduction

Eugenio Barba, those of you in the class will remember the videos with the ‘falling’ actors– this is Barba’s troupe. He’s written several excellent books on physical theater including the “Dictionary of Theater Anthropology”, easily the best book on physical theater for the animator. The Table of Contents will already tell you how much great stuff is in here! You guys in the Animation Workshop are very lucky to have several videos of his Odin Theater, which are very hard to get so be sure to have a look at them.

Lee Breuer, head of the Yale Theater Department, directs avant-guard shows involving dance and puppetry

Julie Taymore, from the same school, has done several high-profile projects including the stage version of “Lion King”.
Improbable theater, does fantastic shows in an expressive style with a strong Commedia del’Arte influence

Whew! I’ll put up a bit more as I have time.. I hope this is useful to you guys as a starting point, anyways!